Evaluation of Cybercrime Economy via MCDM and Decision Tree Approaches: The Case of Zonguldak

Abstract

One of the most important economic problems that developed/ing countries are facing today is the informal economy. Unregistered economic activities are generally defined as all economic activities that are not included in national accounts. The informal economy has an informal structure as well as a criminal structure. Cyber-attack/s (CA) are increasing day by day as an important part of the informal economy due to the economic effects they produce. Credit card fraud, emptying a bank account, cryptolocker viruses that can be used to encrypt data on the user’s computer, the use of websites and e-commerce sites such as DDOS attacks, espionage, information smuggling, and many new computing crimes can be given as examples in this field. This study aims to evaluate the relations/determiners of CA-damages and information technology (IT) investments to firms’ economics and present the findings to the researchers/decision makers. In this sense, IT investments and CA/CA costs to 321 Zonguldak firms having more than 20 employees in 2016 have been surveyed by Turkish Statistical Institute. According to CA-damage severity indexes generated via TOPSIS, statistical methods and decision tree approaches supported by regression analysis are used in the analysis. According to the analysis, CA-damage increased as IT investments increased. IT investments dimensions’ existence of “website/mobile applications” and “IT policy implementation” accepted the main CA-damage determiners. Meanwhile, the firm’s less usage of firewalls/IPS/IDS indicates that CA are not fully understood, and the security policies’ application is also important along with its preparation. © 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG